The present invention generally relates to television schedule information, and more particularly to a system and method for providing previews of scheduled programming to assist a viewer in making scheduling decisions.
As the number of television stations in a metropolitan area or on a cable network has increased, the number of programs of potential interest that are presented to a viewer has risen dramatically. With the use of dish antennas capable of receiving direct satellite signals, the multitude of programs available to the viewer has further increased.
Additionally, television faces a digital future that will see the merger of television and PC technology. The television set of the future will include a micro-computer, a modem of interconnectivity with other computers over networks, intranets, and the internet, and be connectable to computer peripherals such as printers. Such capabilities as near “video on demand” (NVOD), “video on demand,” “access to the world wide web,” “audio on demand,” etc., will present the viewer with a plethora of information and bandwidth.
As has become increasingly evident, information overload can actually reduce the usefulness of the information delivered. Accordingly, a great challenge exists to provide an interface that manages and provides an intelligent, user-friendly interface to the information available.
Consequently, television schedule systems that are provided directly on the viewer's television screen have been developed to assist the viewer in sorting through these various programs and determining which programs to watch or record. One such television schedule system is disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,121 (Young et al.), the complete disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference. In one embodiment of Young, the television schedule includes a series of menu screens having an array of cells corresponding to different television programs. The viewer may scroll through the cells to view which television programs are being presented on various channels at various times. In addition, the viewer may select certain cells to obtain more information on the associated program or to pull up other submenus with additional options.
The recent development of television schedule systems, such as the above described patent to Young, have created many new challenges. Today's guides have only a single source listing, with all available programming presented in a time-based schedule grid. There is also no current ability to allow third parties with different finding/filtering criteria to create useful listings and/or access for viewers.
Also, there is an increasingly important dual need among users to both screen out unwanted programming and find desired programming. As the number of programs/events accessible increases, these issues will become even more important and current strategies such as simple program ratings will not be effective or efficient enough to handle these interrelated user needs.